This thread brings me back to the forced Sunday afternoon family drives of the 1980s to some other empty depressing Irish town that was also shut tight because nothing opened on a Sunday during the 80s and all you wanted was to go back home to play the Commadore 64 or watch the Goonies on video and you still had homework to do for the 60 yr old alcoholic CBS priest who lost his faith twenty years ago but enjoyed slapping children to hear them cry. Grey. That was the 1980ís in Ireland. Everything overcast and covered in grey.

It was even worse in the 50s / 60s /70s.....You would be brought to some depressing "cafe" where you would be served Calvita cheese sandwiches and very hot Irel coffee poured from a bottle, while your mother---and indeed every passing adult woman---would keep slapping you gently on the hand and telling you to sit up straight in your plastic chair and have manners and say thank you to the scowling battleaxe who had flung this inedible repast down on the table with such ill grace....

Oh, Ireland of the welcomes...

When I was a child I used to look at those Bord Failte and Aer Lingus ads of glowing glasses of whiskey on antique tables beside great Georgian fireplaces, horses galloping over green paddocks, comely maidens serving wild salmon, venison and rare steaks off silver platters.....

And I used to think to myself: "Who the fukk do they think they're kidding?" (except we didn't say "fukk" in those days)

But guess what, Ireland now actually does look a lot like those ads....Bad it may be now, but it's still great by comparison..

Town=Tuam would be hard to beat but honourable mentions go to Bellmullet,Boyle and Ballinasloe.One thing in Tuam's favour is that there are fewer ghost estates than other towns of its size.However the Celtic Tiger pretty much bypassed it.I always thing a thesis about it's social problems would be fascinating.

Gort?

The town itself just used to be the traffic jam on the very potholed road to Galway.

Dunmanway in West Cork. It is particularly ugly because West Cork itself is just such a stunning area with lovely towns...this is the rotten tooth.

I'm not as anti-McDonalds as other people here. If you're going to have a vibrant town center with cinemas, dancehalls etc, then people will also want convenient fast-food. I think the McDonald's in Bray is quite discreet in terms of its signage.

Putting it into the shopping centre instead of Main Street would make it descreet, or have it on Main Street& get rid of the plastic signs.

I remember going to Dun Laoghaire with my Granny when I was very young (60s) there were no shopping centres, no McDonalds or Icelads or Euro Shops. There was Finlaters, where a customer stood in front of the counter and ordered what they needed - so many scoops of sugar, so many scoops of tea, a slab of butter, brown and white flour etc. The counter was magnificant, I could not even peep over it but I used to play with a carved lion's nose while I waited.

I love Dun Laoghaire, but it still has the "Blackpool" type railings, and the folly that was built for Queen Vic.

Gort used to have a great nightclub in Sullivans Hotel back in the 80s, a great place for fights and drinking. There was a real touch of the wild west about the place, I always had the feeling that there should have been horses tied up outside the pubs in the square.

There were two ways to pronounce Gort:

You could say Gaw-rt, with a D4 Ross O'Carroll Kelly inflection...

Or just Gort with a clipped short "o" and a rolled "rr"....The latter was the real thing....

Yes, I think we need to give this thread a bit of texture by creating atmosphere...So:

Tuam on a November evening, freezing squalls of rain blowing sideways in a bitter East wind....

The few people who were in shopping have gone home......the odd fast-food carton lifted and blown down the street...

A publican stands forlornly at the door of his empty premises (a carpeted, dark 1970s-type lounge with a pool table) and gazes out on the shuttered shops....wet cigarette butts at his feet...he spits...turns back into his pub....

A woman wrapped up in a rainproof anorak hurries by carrying something in a plastic bag....she is the only person to be seen, and soon she too is gone---into a little terraced house on the street with net curtains on the windows..

The streetlights come on, reflecting yellow light back from the pools of rain.....

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